CNN: \u00a0http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/09\/15\/asia\/japan-north-korea-missile-reaction\/index.html<\/p>\n
\u2014 Residents in northern Japan were woken abruptly
\nFriday by blaring air raid sirens signaling a North Korean
\nintermediate-range ballistic missile was about to fly over their
\nheads.
\nIt was the second time in just over two weeks the rogue state
\nhad fired a projectile over Japanese territory, a provocation
\nwhich was immediately condemned by Prime Minister Shinzo
\nAbe.
\nThe missile passed over the northern island of Hokkaido where
\nanxious residents told local media they didn’t understand why
\nNorth Korea was acting so antagonistically.
\nBut CNN’s Tokyo producer Yoko Wakatsuki said broader reaction in Tokyo and across national media was more
\nmeasured.
\n“People know what North Korea is doing is a little bit of provocation … they know this is not a direct attack to
\nJapan, it’s not an overture to war,” CNN Tokyo producer Yoko Wakatsuki said.
\nBut underneath the calm exterior, Friday’s launch has widened a growing fault line in the ideological war over how
\nJapan should deal with the North Korean threat to the region.
\nAbe’s government have sought closer ties with the United States while working to change Japan’s post-World War
\nII constitution to allow the country to actively defend itself against external threats.
\nBut Koichi Nakano, Political Science professor at Sophia University, told CNN Abe’s opponents are angry their
\nsupposed ally in Washington was making Japan less safe under President Trump and want to soften their ties to
\nthe US, while upholding their nation’s pacifist values.
\n“The danger of North Korea has been if anything heightened after Trump came to power (due to) his sometimes
\nreally provocative language and tweets. He’s not really helping that much,” he said.
\n9\/20\/2017 Japan split over how to deal with North Korean missile launches – CNN
\nhttp:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/09\/15\/asia\/japan-north-korea-missile-reaction\/index.html 2\/4
\nThe push for re-militarization
\nFor decades, Japan has debated revising its pacifist constitution which prevents it from initiating war.
\nBut in recent years, under the threat of attack by an increasingly antagonistic North Korea, Shinzo Abe’s
\ngovernment has made a renewed push for change.
\n“If the government gets its way, it’s quite conceivable Abe will
\nuse this to try to revise the constitution to ‘normalize’ Japan’s
\ndefense position,” Nakano said.
\nThe constitution came into eect
\nin 1947, after Japan’s defeat
\nin World War II, and says “land, sea and air forces, as well as
\nother war potential will never be maintained.” The Japanese
\nmilitary is currently known as the Self-Defense Forces.
\nIn mid-April, Abe said Japan’s security situation in the region
\nwas “getting increasingly severe,” referring to the North
\nKorean threat. But repeated polls among the Japanese public
\nhave found no appetite for constitutional change.
\n“Abe and his government are trying to make the most of this
\ncrisis and the opportunity, almost, to try to make an argument
\n(for) the push towards remilitarization,” Nakano said.
\nBut Heigo Sato, vice president of the Institute of World Studies
\nat Takushoku University, told CNN Abe was first and foremost trying to change the constitution to legalize Japan’s
\ncurrent armed forces.
\n“We don’t know if Abe has a hidden objective to remilitarize Japan after those changes to the constitution,” he
\nsaid.
\nThe nuclear option
\nSpeaking to CNN on Thursday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said while he was in charge there would be
\nno nuclear weapons in his country, no matter what the North does.
\nThis has long been the stance of Japan as well, but in recent
\nyears some politicians have begun to raise the possibility of
\nnuclearization in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear testing.
\n“There are politicians who are arguing about nuclear sharing
\nwith the US, meaning to bring in tactical nukes into the
\nJapanese mainland so we can have some sort of deterrence,”
\nSato said, adding it was considered an option of last resort.
\nJapan is the only country in the world to suer
\nthe eects
\nof
\nan atomic explosion within a civilian setting. The bombings,
\nwhich occurred in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have
\ncolored attitudes to nuclear weapons ever since.
\nAdditionally, it is still recovering from the nuclear disaster at
\nFukushima power plant in 2011, when an earthquake followed
\nby a tsunami blew out safety systems and triggered a
\nmeltdown.
\n“The opposition to the idea of Japan going nuclear is even stronger obviously than the idea of revising (the
\nRelated Article: Japanese leader sets
\n2020 deadline for changing pacifist
\nconstitution
\n\uf146
\nRelated Video: Some Japanese
\npreparing for nuclear attack 02:35
\n9\/20\/2017 Japan split over how to deal with North Korean missile launches – CNN
\nhttp:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/09\/15\/asia\/japan-north-korea-missile-reaction\/index.html 3\/4
\n“The opposition to the idea of Japan going nuclear is even stronger obviously than the idea of revising (the
\nconstitution) … even the discussion of that continues to be taboo,” Nakano said.
\nBut a nuclear South Korea under Moon or another leader could change that, Tong Zhao, fellow at the CarnegieTsinghua
\nCenter for Global Policy, told CNN.
\n“If South Korea pursued its own nuclear program, Japan will feel a great pressure to follow suit and there will be
\nbroader implications in China and Russia,” he said.
\nArms race in East Asia
\nJapan already has a number of defensive options to deal with a missile fired out of North Korea, experts say.
\nNaval destroyers fitted with Aegis missile defense systems can be positioned to shoot down projectiles, but the
\nsystem is far from perfect, Zhao said.
\n“Japan has to place the Aegis-mounted ships in the right
\nplace before the missile launches in order to have a good
\nchance to engage the missiles. (Plus) interception is not
\nperfect, it’s unlikely to be fully successful,” he said.
\nTokyo continues to improve its defensive capabilities in the
\nface of constant provocations from North Korea, but any rapid
\nexpansion of its military or changes to its constitution could
\nhave implications far outside Pyongyang.
\nZhao said, in an eort
\nto deter North Korea, Japan could
\nprovoke an arms race in East Asia with South Korea, China
\nand even Russia.
\n“There is deep distrust among the regional countries … some
\nChinese argue Japan is stirring up tensions over the Korean
\npeninsula in order to have an excuse to have its own military,”
\nhe said.
\nNakano said any knee jerk reaction to the North Korean threat could risk inflaming tensions across the region.
\n“North Korea is performing provocatively, no doubt about it … but the tense conditions are not just about North
\nKorea but about China and the US as well,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CNN: \u00a0http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/09\/15\/asia\/japan-north-korea-missile-reaction\/index.html \u2014 Residents in northern Japan were woken abruptly Friday by blaring air raid sirens signaling a North Korean intermediate-range ballistic missile was about to fly over their heads. It was the second time in just over two weeks the rogue state had fired a projectile over Japanese territory, a provocation which was immediately condemned by Prime Minister Shinzo… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[41],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-north-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":722,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions\/722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}